


The Beautiful Reunion

by orphan_account



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Reincarnation, egyptian mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 21:51:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5886664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remembering one's past lives takes some getting used to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Beautiful Reunion

Kendra dreams of a river. It is as deep and dangerous as love, as full of hidden traps. She knows its name in ten different languages; she sees it through the eyes of a priestess and a slave-girl and a young wife drawing water from the shallows. She wakes up and remembers the postcards her cousin Lainey sent her from Egypt. _The river smells like shit_ , she’d written on the back of the first one. _And I almost got hit by a goddamn fucking bus. Don’t come._  

 

It had been funny then, but now Kendra knows she’ll love that horrible river and that gorgeous country even after the sun burns it all away. She’ll just keep caring and caring, life after life. You never really _forget_ where you come from. It stays with you like an old injury.

 

There’s an old lai from medieval Paris stuck in her head these days–a sickly-sweet cluster of verses about a beautiful maiden in a meadow. Carter had loved that stupid song. He’d been one of those terrible university boys who thought it was cute to wander around the streets at an ungodly hour, yodeling love ballads.

 

Carter had always desperately wanted to be charming. He’d never _quite_ achieved it, but Kendra had loved him anyway.

 

Loves. It’s in the present tense, like her feelings for the Nile. When you live again and again, everything happens at once. The Nile is always flooding. Napoleon is always invading Egypt. The Old Believers are always rioting in Russia, and Carter Hall is always kissing Kendra Saunders, in all times and all places, now and forever.

 

They land in Dendera sometime during the New Kingdom, and Kendra almost runs out of the _Waverider_.

 

“Wait!” Rip shouts after her, hopelessly. “No, wait, we need to stay together–!”

 

But there is the scent of myrrh on the wind, and Kendra can hear singing in the town. She can't stop now, not when she's so close to home.

 

Jax, of all people, is the one who catches up with her.

 

“Hey,” he says, taking her shoulder and turning her face him. “You all right?”

 

Kendra laughs at him, a little breathless. “I’m–” she waves a hand at the town. She doesn’t have the words in English to explain. “It doesn’t matter.”

 

Jax’s frown deepens. He’s about her age, physically, but Kendra is suddenly struck by how very _young_ he is. “I hate to say it,” he says, “but Rip’s right. We gotta stick together.”

 

“No,” Kendra says. “Just–just trust me. I have to do this alone.”

 

“You can’t,” says Rip. He’s finally caught them, out of breath and a little ruffled, but his eyes are kind. “Kendra, I know this is hard. But you _can’t_ interfere with your own timeline.”

 

“I wasn’t planning to,” she says, offended. “It’s a _holiday_. I just…can I just have this?”

 

“Why not?” Ray asks quietly. She smiles at him.

 

“I think we’ve demonstrated that meddling in one’s own past _can_ do quite a bit of damage!” Rip says, looking about two seconds from tearing his own hair out by the roots.

 

“I won’t go looking for anyone,” Kendra says. “I'm not going to accidentally kill Cleopatra or something. Carter and I aren't even _here_ right now. Please. I need–” And there still aren't words for it. "I need this."

 

“We’re losing time,” Snart grumbles. “If she wants to go dance with the locals, I say we let her.”

 

“Don’t get caught,” Rip says at last, sighing. He always gives in; sometimes Kendra wonders what kind of father he was, to be so indulgent of them all even when they're at their most bewildering and difficult.

 

“ _Please_ ,” she says carelessly, because that last thought hurts. “I’ve got thousands of years of practice at sneaking around.”

 

“Oh, _really_ ,” Snart says, in the driest tone she’s ever heard from him.

 

She grins, blows him a kiss, and takes off for the town before anyone else can raise another objection. Sara whoops behind her, because Sara is a bad influence on them all.

 

Down in Dendera, the Festival of the Beautiful Reunion is in full swing. The icons of Horus and Hathor are hoisted up above the heads of the worshippers, as sacred and strange as she remembers them. She laughs, plunging into the crowd of dancers, and takes up the steps without conscious thought. These people are dead. These people are alive. These people have yet to be born. All of them will be forgotten by the ages to come, and there will be no record of their existence for archaeologists to wonder over.

 

But for Kendra, unmoored in time as she is, this day will always be happening. She commits each face to memory, loves them all fiercely, and sings.


End file.
